Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 116, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1910 — Democrats Will Undertake To Repeal Accounting Law. [ARTICLE]

Democrats Will Undertake To Repeal Accounting Law.

Indianapolis, May 14.—One of the things which the democrats will prob ably undertake to do next winter, in case they control the Indiana legislature, will be to repeal or modify and amend the public accounting law so aS to make it useless. This developed a day or two ago when it became knowr. that a strong effort was made to keep out of the democratic state platform any favorable comment on this law. The effort to prevent this indorse ment of the law was made by Joseph E. Bell, of Indianapolis, who was a member of the resolutions committee Bell is the main wheel in the Taggart machine, and is a brewery attorney, so it is taken that his attitude on the subject of the public accounting law represents the opinion of the Taggart machine and the brewery people. The public accounting law has been in force only about a year, and it is oulj four months since the examiners began digging into the books of public officials and former officials through out the state, but in that time they have uncovered many cases of graft and loot, in which public officials have taken thousands of dollars from the public treasury to which they were not entitled. In scores of cases the examiners have discovered where the officials have paid enormous prices for supplies; where contracts have been let without bids; where money lias been paid for supplies that never were furnished and all that sort of thing Several of the officials who were caught in the net by the examiners have already stepped up and settled and paid back to the county or township or city the amount of money which it was found they owed. Thousands of dollars have been collected back in this way. In many cases settlements are now under way, and in others suits will be brought to enforcer settlements.